


Antiparticles

by yourfaveisproblematic



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Consensual Underage Sex, F/M, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, exploring what a relationship between these two would actually look like, if the age gap was legit but they were in a relationship anyway, listen this started as a thought experiment, please keep scrolling, so if that is not your jam, so this is NOT EXACTLY DESCRIBING A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-06
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-10-15 08:40:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10553376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourfaveisproblematic/pseuds/yourfaveisproblematic
Summary: an·ti·par·ti·cleNoun. A subatomic particle having the same mass as a given particle but opposite electric or magnetic properties. Every kind of subatomic particle has a corresponding antiparticle, e.g., the positron has the same mass as the electron but an equal and opposite charge.





	1. we knew it was wrong

Shiro can’t quite remember how this started. You should, shouldn’t you? You should remember how you started fucking your dead friend’s baby sister. Your dead commander’s _teenage_ _daughter_. That should be tattooed on your goddamn frontal lobe. You should never be able to forget that. And yet. And yet, here he is, with his cheek against her thigh. She’s _squirming_ under him. Her breath is coming in audible gusts and he _lives_ for that sound.

One of her hands is curled into his hair, latched around the white shock of it, tangled into strands that are thick and tacky with product. The other is laced into his steel fingers, gripping until the cybernetic joints creak. She _whimpers_ and he presses closer, tighter. His remaining arm curls around her thigh, fingers pressing, finding target inches above his own nose and she _wails,_  bucking furiously against his face until she’s done.

You should remember how this happens.

 

Maybe he knows. At least, some of the details. He remembers sitting with her. A name whispered into the cold, open air. Her shuddering shoulders, her thin sobs, because there’s at least one person on the team she doesn’t have to hide everything from. She’s been a boy so long. She’s been _Pidge_ so long. Part of her likes it but part of her is so tired. Of the lies, of the short hair and the fake glasses. Of the sneaking around, of the hacking files and pretending it wasn’t the newly arrived supergenius with papers that no one’s figured out are forged yet.

He remembers her face pressed to his chest, his shirt going damp from her tears. He remembers what she says, and he mostly remembers what she doesn’t say.

She says “Please. Only when we’re alone.”

She means, _I’ve been hiding so long sometimes I forget my own name. Please._

But what she also means is _we’ll be alone together, again._

Which also means _we’ll be alone, together_.

And maybe that’s the truth of what this is.

 

He doesn’t entirely remember the night she first shows up at his door, or why it continues past that. He doesn’t remember that day of long, grueling drills, of endless flying. He doesn’t remember standing in his cabin, sweat-soaked shirt thrown into a corner. He doesn’t remember rubbing the back of his head where the hair is sticking damply to his skin and thinking _I should shower_.

He doesn’t remember her knocking on his door. He doesn’t remember being too drained to be bothered grabbing a shirt—after all the only woman on board is Allura and she wouldn’t knock, she’d call.

He remembers his door sliding open. He remembers Pidge’s eyes masked behind her plastic lenses. He remembers, nonsensically, the sharp inhale of breath that she gave while he stood there in front of her, scratching idly at his chest with his remaining fingers.

He remembers—no, that’s not quite right. His brain doesn’t remember it. Not the conscious, driven, respectable part of his brain, the part that commands, that leads, that makes speeches. No, the part of him that remembers what comes next is his lizard brain. The part that’s _hungry_ , the part that is all impulse and need. The part that drools when he thinks about that one—er— _actress_ he liked when he used to watch vids back home.

That part of him remembers the way Pidge sucked in a breath and then pulled off her glasses, like she didn’t want anything in between his body and her eyes.

That part of him remembers the way she looked at him. The _heat_ , the naked want.

 _That_ part of him was what made him back up a step. Then a second. Not a retreat, but a _come on_.

 _I know you want to come in_.

She did. And she acted on it. Maybe _that_ part of her brain was in control too.

The door slid shut behind her. She reached back, tapped a console. It clicked. Evidently the sound for _locked_ is universal.

He remembers the rest. The soft, tentative, curious brush of her hand against his chest. The thick smell of her, just as tired and drained and run-ragged as he was. The texture of her hair, when he swept cautious fingers through it and curled into it at the back of her neck.

She didn’t say anything, not then. Not with her mouth. She didn’t need to—her body spoke volumes.

 _Everyone thinks of me as something I’m not_ , it said, when she pressed against him.

 _The guys, the Garrison, think of me as a boy_ , it told him, when her lips found the valleys and ridges of his torso, his collarbones.

 _Allura and Coran think of me as a soldier_ , it said, when her mouth—soft, gentle, terrified but so desperately in need—found his and touched, then pressed harder, clumsy and curious and unpracticed but searching, learning at a speed that only Pidge could.

 _My lion thinks of me as a paladin_ , it said, when she pressed closer. He backed up under the weight of it all, let her push him all the way to his bed until they toppled onto it.

 _My family thought of me as a child_ , it whispered, most importantly of all, as her hands traced reverent paths up and down his body, catching anxiously at his belt, wanting more but not knowing how to ask.

Most of all he remembered, vividly, impossibly, the hot brush of her breath against his ear when she whispered, as if everything that she’d been saying had been said aloud.

“Think of me as a woman, Shiro?” she said, all breath, no bravado. It wasn’t really a question, he realized suddenly, painfully. It was supplication. This wasn’t Pidge, this was Katie.

And she was _begging_.

“Please,” Katie whispered.

He took her by the waist and rolled her over, sliding his warm, human hand up under her sweater, rucking up her shirt until he could touch her skin, letting his palm burn against her stomach while his other hand tangled into her hair, his thumb against her chin to make her look at him. Here, like this, with her hair fanning out around her face she really did _look_ like Katie. _Pidge_ lay forgotten on the floor in his doorway with her fake glasses.

She held her breath. She was watching his face.

“Okay,” he breathed, and the horrible, agonized, anxious lines of her face melted, her mouth splitting into a smile, her cheeks flushed. “Okay,” he said again, and then, “Okay,” he whispered, the word tangled in her lips as he kissed her, hard, pouring whatever it was he was feeling into her mouth.

He couldn’t save Samuel. He could only pray he’d helped Matthew, but this. This he could do. He could make sure Katie was alright.

 _Very_ alright, if he had anything to say for himself.


	2. we did it anyway

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Particle–antiparticle pairs can annihilate each other, producing photons; since the charges of the particle and antiparticle are opposite, total charge is conserved. For example, the positrons produced in natural radioactive decay quickly annihilate themselves with electrons, producing pairs of gamma rays, a process exploited in positron emission tomography."

Pidge remembers _exactly_ how this started.

There’s a sort of horrible elegance to it. An efficiency of inefficient unproductive emotion. Emotions cost energy that she can’t afford. Outbursts are exhausting. Resolutions, draining. She needs that energy, needs it to find her family, to fly her Lion, to keep the frustratingly endearing stupidity of her teammates at bay.

She needs.

In the end, that’s what it comes down to; that’s the part that matters. The need. She needs something she can’t get anywhere else. An energy transfer, a _feeling_. Needs aren’t like emotions. Needs cost energy too, but needs can’t be neatly put into boxes and stored in the back of her mind until she has time and energy to deal with them, the way she handles her emotions. Needs linger. Needs scratch at her, thin points running down her spine like trails of ice until she shivers. Need, when she tried to ignore it, became her constant companion, like a shitty roommate or a yowling cat: insistent and omnipresent and impatient. Need scratched at her until her nerves tingled, until she felt the tension like a nervous energy, buzzing in the marrow of her bones. Need coils in her gut, draws her like a magnet to the one person she should hate.

Shiro is the walking proof that her family is still missing. He is the sole survivor, bearing scars emotional and physical. He feigns normalcy rather than indulge his pain and it galls her that he gets to choose that while her brother doesn’t have the same privilege.

She should hate him. She certainly shouldn’t want him. She shouldn’t _notice_ whenever he sets his hand next to her arms on a table to lean over and talk to one of the boys. She shouldn’t _feel_ him like an electric current arcing along her entire body. But she does.

God help her, she needs him. He’s the walking proof that her family didn’t explode in a reentry fire or get kicked out of orbit like the news reports liked to guess. He is the walking proof that her brother might still be alive. He is the one thing that connects her back to them, the one link, the one tether between her new reality of Paladins and aliens... and theirs.

He can’t bring them back. But when it gets to be too much, when she needs to wrap her fingers around that tether and tug a little to remind herself that it exists, he lets her. He doesn’t laugh, he doesn’t frown. He lets her tangle her fingers into him and pull and it’s almost like he understands. Understands how she aches for him. She needs him.

And _he_ needs _her_ , even if he won’t admit it.

So, there’s an elegance to it. Like some horrible yin and yang.

 

What she does with Shiro doesn’t warrant a pretty euphemism. Maybe at first, she thought it would. She imagined... something. Gentleness, patience. Sweet little words that mean something important, whispered in the dark where hidden and visible, truth and lies, all mix together into something uncharted and frightening in its beauty.

But that isn’t what she needs. So she doesn’t ask for it.

What she does with Shiro is animal. There’s hardly any other word for it. It isn’t beautiful, it isn’t soft, it isn’t gentle. It’s hard and it’s bruising and she learns very quickly to be grateful for her high-collared sweater and the thick plates of her battlearmor. She learns to hide smiles behind mouthfuls of food when Shiro settles around the table and for just a second he winces when his shoulders touch the solid back of his chair, knowing she left scratch marks half a foot long on his skin. She learns how to set privacy filters on their quarters that Coran won’t notice and she learns how to get from her room to Shiro’s without being spotted.

He learns Lance’s beauty regime and Keith’s sparring practice schedule and makes a point of dragging her away every time everyone else was busily absorbed in themselves. She hates him for the indiscretion but it just makes her need him more and the cycle all begins again.

Human beings are just another type of animal, after all.

Specifically a type of animal with bad timing and worse impulse control.

 

They meet in the hallway.

It’s a sort of orchestrated accident, these meetings. When the paladins argue and tempers run hot, she can feel him pretending not to look at her while she pretends not to look at him. They each, separately, snarl _I’m going for a walk_ at the group before leaving the bridge in a storm of anger and dark, hungry energy that only the two of them can feel passing between them like a solar flare.

For show, before the doors shut, she snaps, “I’m going right!”

For show, as the doors close with a hiss, he barks, “Then I’m going left.”

They walk in opposing directions and it feels like stretching a rubber band. Inevitably it will snap them back together in a crash. They walk until the others will have gotten bored and stopped watching the feeds. They walk paths that they pretend won’t meet, but always, always do.

They meet in the middle of a corridor, this time. A meaningful glance sends Rover to check on the security feeds and loop some archival footage to cover what comes next. She watches the little drone go, and when it beeps and signals safety, she turns to look at Shiro.

She first perceives him only as a blur, before realizing he’s simply in motion, moving toward her with an animal burst of speed. On instinct, she raises her fists to defend, unconsciously reaching for a bayard she isn’t wearing. He grabs her by the shoulders, twists, shoves her against the wall. His mouth burns where it meets hers, searing heat and wet against her lips as they part to let him press against her. His body is firm and heavy where he leans against her, pinning her against the wall, and the feeling of being _safe_ wars with the feeling of being _trapped_ until she claws at his shirt.

“C’mere,” he breathes, and pulls away, and she feels the _absence_ of him so keenly she _whines_ at him, blearily opening her eyes to track where he’s going. He steps down the hall and shoves open a panel to what she has to assume is the ancient Altean equivalent of a broom closet. Racks of shelves, mostly empty, line the walls, and when she follows him inside the door slides shut, leaving them in near-darkness.

A few rows of emergency lights glow softly from the floor, and in the faint blue glow Shiro is devastatingly handsome. The shadows cast across his face mask the pain and the responsibility, and before she is quite aware of what she’s doing, she’s touching his face, tracing the shadows and the harsh line of his scar. He pauses and lets her, and she chews on her lip, trying to wrestle down the surge of _want_ she feels.

“Shiro,” she whispers, but there’s a _heat_ in it, not a softness.

Maybe he understands. Maybe he _knows_.

He flashes her a grin that in the semi-darkness looks downright devilish, and scoops her up with both hands, picking her bodily up off the floor and setting her down on a worktable. It puts her almost at eye-level, and she runs her hands up his chest, raking at the fabric of his vest. He shucks it off, then pulls the grey shirt overhead and tosses both in the general vicinity of the exit panel. She trails her fingers over his bare skin, relishing the warmth of it and the lines and curves of his chest. He pulls the fake lenses off her nose and sets them on a nearby shelf, and she watches the way he stretches to do it.

She finds the seam of his Galran arm with one hand as he leans closer, kissing her again until she lays back under his weight. He shoves once and her shoulders hit the tabletop with a soft thump of impact that makes her pulse spike.

“Shiro,” she whispers again, and it’s a little senseless, a little meaningless, but he chuckles softly against her mouth, and she feels his hands trailing down to the hem of her sweater, tugging it up so that his palm can splay across her stomach. Her skin burns under his touch and she has the brief irrational thought that it’s so hot he might leave marks.

“Katie,” he whispers, and she _melts_. The weight on her shoulders slips away with her sweater as he works it up over her head. The slide of fleece and the cotton workshirt underneath is too fast and desperate to be sensual but it makes her heartrate pick up anyway. She arches her back and lifts her shoulders so that he can slide it over her head. He tosses both pieces aside, and the sound of them hitting the floor _does_ something to her.

He pauses then, leaning over her and admiring. She is halfway dressed and only technically decent, but even so the only thing making her feel vulnerable and exposed is the cold worktable under her shoulders and her back. The surface starts to warm up from her lying on it, but the strap of her bra is downright tangible from the contrast. His hand trails up her bare stomach to the thin fabric, tracing the edge with one finger. If the fact that it places function over form bothers him, he doesn’t show it—he lets the tip of his finger stray under the fabric, just slightly, before pulling away and trailing down her chest again.

She’s trembling, but it’s not because of the table.

He trails the tip of his finger down her stomach and the touch makes her head spin. “Shiro,” she says again, but there isn’t quite enough sharpness in it to be a true demand.

“Mm,” he says, as if he is humoring her. He doesn’t change his pace—his finger strays further downward, until it meets the waistband of her shorts, where it stalls.

“Shiro,” she growls, and hooks both her legs over his waist, tugging him against her with her ankles locked behind his hips. He relents, lets her drag him closer, and he slots against her like he was made for her, his body pressing hard up against her. He rocks his hips, teasing maybe, and she lets her head fall back with a thump against the table because he feels _right_ , he _fits_ like a jigsaw piece to make a sordid painted image you won’t find in any kids’ toy section.

They both know this puzzle will be torn back apart and shoved into the box and hidden in a drawer eventually but _right now_...

Right now it’s a perfect fit, and she wants him with a ferocity and need that scares her as much as it excites her.

“Shiro,” she whines. Begs. God help her, she’s begging.

He chuckles, damn him, and leans over her, his lips a breath away from hers. His body is heavy on hers and the weight of him makes it all feel more _real_.

“Alright,” he whispers, “If you ask nice.”

“Shiro _please_ ,” she breathes, immediately, without even pausing to consider her dignity.

(It’s somewhere on the floor with her shirt.)

He’s too well-practiced at this, at taking off her clothes. He has to be, after months of opportunity, but even so. The button on her shorts gives when he flicks his fingers over it, and once it’s loose it only takes a light tug of his hands on the hems to pull the cloth down her hips.

She hadn’t bothered to wear anything underneath. On some level, perhaps, she’d needed this since before she was getting dressed this morning.

He notices, and she knows he notices because he suddenly _grins_. She trembles.

Shiro drops her shorts on the floor and she lets out a slow, shaking breath. She props her feet on the edge of the table, and lets her knees spread. The sound, the soft, wet smack of it, is mortifying, but it has the desired effect: his eyes flash. _Hunger_.

He really does need this as badly as she does.

It’s only flashes of moments that she perceives then, and the low, throaty groan he makes when he unfastens his pants and drags them down toward his knees. He doesn’t take them off, not entirely, and the sensation of _power_ she has over him, to make him act like that, to make him that impatient, sets her blood roaring through her and she _lives_ in that feeling for a moment, relishing the strength.

Then he moves toward her again, sliding between her spread knees, and all her thoughts flicker away like leaves in a high breeze. She slides her hands up to his shoulders again, one finding the seam where flesh meets Galran steel, the other moving higher to tangle in the back of his hair, her fingers curling into the short strands. He reaches down between her legs for a moment, touching so gently that she keens and throws her head back against the table. His fingers stray downward, like a guide, and he presses up against her, thicker than a finger and so much better.

She’s small.

He isn’t.

“Katie,” he whispers, and she almost can’t hear him over her own strangled noises. Desire wars with practicality. The stretch of him _burns_. She _needs_ him, and she clutches at his hair, tugging at him wherever she can to try to _say_ so.

He’s slow, and it almost kills her to wait, to hold on as he rocks into her by degrees.

His forehead finds hers when he’s finally close enough, and she is breathing in frantic, sharp, small sounds, whimpering when his fingers stray over her skin. She’s going to die, she’s going to _live_. She feels him, everywhere. Full and heavy and _searing_.

Thank _god_.

He moves and it’s too much. Her vision flares with white for a moment before it falls into something familiar. The sound of it is more than mortifying now. It’s electrifying, it’s horrifying, it’s emboldening, it’s everything and not enough all at once.

She loses track of time. It might have been seconds, it might have been minutes. At some point she lets go of him and grabs at the table for leverage, using it to push toward him, using it to keep from sliding off the other side. His hands roam, his mouth hot and desperate on hers.

She _shouts_ his name and her voice cracks on it. The devil of him is back, because he only groans her name in her ear and she _shakes_.

Time hazes again and she isn’t sure how long he stands there before slowly pulling back. Her feet slip off the edge of the table to fall limply over the side. He supports himself on his hands a moment, but when she looks at him, he lays himself carefully on top of her. He is solid, and heavy, but he leans on his elbows just a bit, enough not to crush her.

At some point, probably soon, Rover will beep. Their time will run short. They will retreat to their respective rooms to clean up and then eventually they will go back to the bridge and pretend they’ve finally cooled off enough to be in a room with everyone else. It’s familiar, it’s practiced.

But for now, at least, they have this. Sweat-speckled bodies sticking together on a worktable in an unused closet, sharing body heat, satisfying a bone-deep need to be near another human being.

It is only what it is. Inelegant elegance. Unproductive emotion.

She remembers how this started.

But she isn’t sure how it’ll end.


End file.
